I had never heard of the furniture-maker Broyhill, but when searching for a dining room hutch on craigslist, I saw the one pictured here. I fell into furniture lust; a crazed fever for wood and screws arranged in space age Baroque. However, by the time we responded, a mere 21 hours after the post originated, the piece had sold. So, how is it here today in our dining room?
In my delirium, I sought the piece online and found some background information on the maker, but all instances of the piece itself had vanished from existence; the one that got away; the Loch Ness monster of fabulous mid-century hutches. It had only just been inserted into my consciousness and, like a barbed arrow, it could not be removed.
The background turned out to be interesting. This hutch was part of Broyhill's Brasilia furniture line, so named after the then-newly-constructed capital of Brazil. Brasilia was built between 1958 and 1962 as an artificial and perfect city; a monument to high Modernism's heroic ideals. The 'capital of the year 2000!' Pictured here is the Palacio de Alvorada; Brazil's White House and the architectural inspiration for Broyhill's Brasilia line. Note the similar lines?
Having given up on the mysterious and wonderful Brasilia hutch, we went to a local antique fair, and what to our wondering eyes should appear? Yes! Do a google search on 'Broyhill Brasilia hutch' to find how rare even to find pictures of this Western Ivory-Billed Woodpecker and you can appreciate how uncanny it was for me to find two of them in as many weeks, one that got away, and one that came home.
